Do not kill the peacemakers who saved South Africa
· Citizen
Pope Leo has been reminding the world – as Iran and parts of the Gulf are reduced to rubble – of the phrase from Jesus that “blessed are the peacemakers”. But here in South Africa, angry people from across the political spectrum have united to curse our own peacemakers.
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That came into sharp focus with the appointment of former National Party politician Roelf Meyer as South Africa’s ambassador designate to the United States.
Suddenly, the howls erupted from the white right-wing that Meyer was one of the “traitors” who sold out white South Africans, and particularly Afrikaners, to the communist anti-Christ ANC.
Some of the comments came from places you’d expect it – such as AfriForum, which is a linear descendent of apartheid Bittereinders like the Conservative Party. These are the people who wanted – and still want – their own white volkstaat, threatening subtly that they might “ride kommando” again if they do not get their way.
But, surprisingly, among those piling on the Meyer hate-fest were white people who voted “yes” in the 1992 referendum, which paved the way for a transfer of power to the African majority.
Now, watching the country crumble, they believe they were tricked and, no doubt emboldened by the supposed global revival of White Power (as pursued by Donald Trump, et al), they want the good, segregated times back.
They are not the only ones wanting to burn effigies of the people who brought democracy to South Africa.
Outspoken supposed leftist intellectuals, angry young black people and even political writers are increasingly shouting that not only did Nelson Mandela have political feet of clay, he also sold the country’s indigenous people down the river of “neocolonialism”… whatever that means.
Those extremists seem to want a reason – like being sold out – to explain why the country is such a manifest basket case… an explanation which seeks to lay the blame on malign outside forces rather than internal greed and corruption.
What both sides are forgetting – or were too young to have been around in the dying days of apartheid – was that this country was headed for a bloody civil war had the 1994 miracle not happened. And, believe me, anything which avoids a civil war is a miracle.
Much as the then SA Defence Force (SADF) was in no danger of being defeated militarily on the battlefield, the freedom struggle was being fought on a much broader terrain – that of international opprobrium, sanctions and isolation.
White people who believe the military could have propped up apartheid for more than a few years are living in a dream world.
Likewise, those on the other side who believe that uMkhonto weSizwe, perhaps the most ineffective African liberation movement, could have wrestled the country’s freedom through the barrel of a gun, are also living in La-La land.
When Mandela walked off Robben Island in 1990, the Soviet Union had collapsed and, along with it, its support of liberation movements around the world.
No-one in the West would have sent troops against the SADF, who were mostly white.
Violence in the cities and on the isolated farms was a real possibility and the Nats knew that if they pushed Africans into a proper, popular revolution, they couldn’t stop it.
The real truth is that many of those cursing the peacemakers today are only able to do so because they were not consigned to an early, shallow grave.